Treatments

Almost every day the doctors learn more about how Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis affect children and the treatments are improving all the time.

There are several different types of medicine and tablets that the doctors can give you. They will have looked at the results of all the tests that you have had done before deciding which one they think will make you better

Sometimes you will need to have an enteral diet which means that you drink a special drink which gives you all the things that food contains but in a form that your tummy will find very easy to digest. This used to be a very horrible taste but now you can have it in different flavours to make it taste better. Sometimes this may have to be given through a tube which is put up your nose and down into your tummy. This doesn’t sound very nice but lots of tiny children have this done and sometimes they like to put the tube up their nose themselves. This is a very special fine tube so that it doesn’t hurt.

Not all children with Crohn’s Disease or Ulcerative Colitis have to have an operation but sometimes it is necessary for the doctors to have look in your tummy and take a piece of your bowel out. If you do have to have this done the doctors will give you something to make you go into a lovely sleep and when you wake up you wont remember anything about it. You certainly won’t feel any pain while you are asleep and there will be lots of doctors and nurses looking after you. If, when you wake up you have a little bit of pain (just like when you fall over and bruise yourself), the nurses will give you something to take the pain away.

Do remember that whatever treatment you have will help you to get better so that you are able to have a normal life, go to school, play with your friends and most of all have FUN.